


Trade the Souls of Children (As If They Were Tokens)

by IncurableNecromantic



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, I mean for a given understanding of shrubs, I stand by my conviction that the Queen of the Clouds is wayyyy more fucked up than we realize, Negotiations, Poaching, but in an indirect and family-friendly kind of way, dream-eating and child-killing, grand theft shrubbery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-22 07:25:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8277646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncurableNecromantic/pseuds/IncurableNecromantic
Summary: There's no such thing as wishes coming true.  There's only diplomacy.





	

**Author's Note:**

> It only just occurred to me to wonder how the Queen of the Clouds got the Beast to trade Wirt for Greg, when he already had Wirt well on the way to becoming an Edelwood. Bird in the hand and all. Here's a story about that.

Her champion wanted a boon. He was a sweet child and he had done her a service, but this was still a little much.

“Are you sure?” she asked. Couldn’t he just want to go home by himself? That’d be so much easier.

The boy nodded his little head. She heaved a sigh. No, of course he’d be selfless and sweet—he never would’ve gotten this far if he weren’t.

“Then it shall be done.”

* * *

It was bitterly cold, even without the wind. The air was tight and crisp and the frigid night sucked every speck of warmth out of their hiding places and ate them.

She found the Old Man not far from where the boy slept against the base of the tree. The moon hadn’t risen tonight and her clouds concealed the stars. The flat brightness of his eyes cast no glow, and if it had not been for his voice humming through the trees, her cherubs would have been hard pressed to find him. They flocked behind her as she approached the Old Man, though she could hardly imagine why they thought that necessary. Petty and vicious he certainly was, but he wouldn’t injure them while she was there, and anyway his cruelty was a kind that preferred the lingering pleasures of turning a victim’s heart inside out. Plucking the wings off of flies would hold little interest for him.

He fell silent as her presence caused the shadows of the trees to stand up and bow to the side. He paused in his walk, waiting for her to struggle down from the heights to a spot beneath the leafless, tangled canopy.

“Beast,” she said by way of greeting.

He held his peace for a moment. His voice was sarcastic when he replied. “Beauty.”

If he really thought that was funny, he was spending entirely too much time around mortals.

“I am here to arrange a trade,” she said, resting the tips of her feet on one of the spindly branches of the trees.

The Old Man huffed and shook his antlered head back and forth. He began to walk on.

Incensed, she flicked a pea of ball lightning into his path. “Stand and address me!”

“Temper, temper,” the Beast replied. He reached out for the ball of lightning and snuffed it between his fingers. “You’re in a foul mood. So quick to anger tonight.”

Of course she was. They never quite got along, her and the Voice of the Night, but being on the defensive pushed it to outright enmity. She gentled her voice and gave him a queenly rebuke.

“That is my nature. You are quick to insult.”

“That is _my_ nature.”

“Can we discuss matters of the hunt, by any chance? I would’ve thought that to be your constant preoccupation, unless you find my company so charming you are goading me into prolonging your exposure to it.”

The Beast rumbled. Perhaps that was a laugh. “As you please. What do you wish to trade, Your _Serene_ Highness?”

“I would exchange the life of the little brother for the life of the elder one.”

“The elder is too old to feed you,” the Beast said. “He’s not a child any more. You’ve eaten all the sweet dreams already. I doubt you’ll find him toothsome, now that I’ve claimed him.”

Wasn’t that the truth? Every now and then she sampled the dreams of those the Old Man had so utterly claimed; their imaginations were unfailingly putrid. But there was no accounting for taste.

“Take the lumpling,” she insisted. “You prefer little children, anyway, don’t you? More hopeful? More quick to despair?”

“Not necessarily. One has to be in the mood for them. I can take them or leave them.”

The Queen of the Clouds grumbled. “Stop playing coy. You prefer this arrangement. I know you do.”

“Mmm.”

“It’s a better hunt with a child! More amusing while it lasts, and not so long, either.”

The Beast tilted his head. “So solicitous for the sake of my amusement, Your Highness. Since you’re being so polite this evening, I will return the favor. What do you gain from this desirable bargain? I would not have you put yourself at a disadvantage for my sake.”

“He takes my fancy,” the Queen said sweetly. “A little poet-prince lost in the woods. You know I can’t resist that. Something so melancholy and sweet, and quite the little artist. I want to see what comes of him.”

“Of course. Poets and dreamers are nearly the same thing, are they?”

Not that he would know. “Very close.”

“Well,” the Beast said. “It’s a tempting proposition, but no. I do not need bait to catch the elder brother and I do not trust you not to unload an emptied shell of a child on me. If this is some kind of belated amends for the saplings you’ve uprooted from my orchard before, you’re going to have to give me quite a few more children to balance the scales. _You_ take the lumpling.”

The Queen seethed for a second or two. Oh, he was such a misery! So she nibbled on his prey every once in awhile—what could he expect? Dying mortals had the sweetest dreams of all, so vivid and so full of wishing! All she wanted was a taste; if she happened to lift them from their despair as she innocently fed, was it really her fault?

“I do not want the little boy,” she said stiffly. “I have no use for him. What will you take, to trade the brothers?”

The Old Man tilted his head and gave her such a look from those empty eyes. “What do you have to tempt me with?”

Electricity crackled around her jaws. “I am being serious!”

“As am I. What are you willing to offer?” His eyes blazed around the edges as two wells of red appeared in the center of the white glow. She heard a soft hiss. He was scenting her. “More importantly, why would you offer at all?”

The Queen of the Clouds drew herself up tall and cold. What could she tell him? The truth was too embarrassing, but he knew how much she disliked him. She wouldn’t put herself to the trouble of dealing with him on a whim. She opened her mouth to reply, hardly knowing what she’d even say, but the Beast’s hiss snapped off. He began to laugh.

“The wind has died! I only just noticed it! You promised him a prize, didn’t you?” the Voice of the Night chortled. “A reward for leashing your pet!”

The Queen’s mouth twisted and thunder rolled somewhere above them. “Of course I promised him a reward! I was expecting a wish to return home! Or to bring a jewel to his mother, or to see his grandmother again, or whatever nonsense it is mortal children usually wish for!”

The trees echoed with laughter. The Old Man’s eyes were squeezed shut with mirth. “But the child is heroic, after all! And you mean to honor your promise? Why?”

She crackled, embarrassed despite herself. She had to honor it. If she didn’t, he’d live to know she could not give him what she promises, and he’d stop trusting in dreams and wishes. Or worse: he’d tell other children to stop trusting in dreams and wishes. Any blow to belief bothered her, now that she had become so used to being well-fed. Besides, failure would torture her every time she passed these Woods. Her pride was at stake in it. She would not rest easy if she knew that there was a child’s wish she could not grant.

“Because I can feed more than once!” she snarled. “Wishes beget dreams! That’s why I do not need to starve in dark corners!”

The Beast barked out a short sound of amusement. “Perhaps I will take the boy after all, if his wish is to send you begging to me!”

The Queen of the Cloud waved her hands and brought down a riot of thunderbolts. He stood and watched her as they struck the earth and the trees and him, light and heat vanishing into the abyss of his being.

“I do not beg!” she boomed. “And I do not beg of you!”

Ice bristled across the ground and began to eat its way up the side of the trees.

“Queen of Peace,” the Beast sneered. “I am not in the habit of making wishes come true. Go harvest dreams from your child. I have a tree to grow.”

He began to walk away. The Queen of the Clouds descended from the tree, floating behind him nearly ten feet off the ground, like a pursuing fog.

“Oh! You—! But why not have them both? If you take the child and free his brother, I’ll let the brother go.” She spread her hands, giving him a reasonable look and the honeyed edge of her voice. “You’re right; he’s too old to be tasty. And if the boy chases after his little brother, you’ll have them both soon enough. You usually do.”

The Old Man looked over his shoulder at her. “Your estimation of my abilities is flattering, Your Celestial Majesty. I had no idea you had such a high opinion of my hunting prowess. You never seem to show it.”

She pressed her lips together and didn’t give him the satisfaction of an expression. She could hear the frost creeping back into his voice.

He went on. “After all the trees you have poached from my forest, all the wishes you’ve granted to my prey, all the oil you’ve swept from my hands—you cannot seriously come to ask for my favor.”

“Keep your favor, but barter the souls of the children with me.”

“No. I have a tree growing already. I’d be a fool to give that up.”

“Think for a moment,” she said desperately. “Are you sure the poet is down forever? What if he wakes?”

“He won’t wake up unless I let him,” the Beast replied.

“You don’t know that, Old Man! How many nights have those children survived alone in your Woods? The boy has certainly proved himself more resilient than your snivelling Woodsman!”

The Beast stopped short. “...I would not describe it as ‘snivelling.’”

The Queen smiled, seeing a weakness at last. Oh, she’d seen them grousing at each other before. The shine was off that arrangement, if the Woodsman dared to betray his master and talk back so boldly.

She floated down just a little closer and brought up a little more sunshine to coat her tongue.

“Aren’t you tired of relying on so disloyal a servant? I would be very put out. It must be so tedious. And you so very vulnerable in his hands...”

“I will replace him when I deem it fit. And what do you know of it?” he asked sharply.

“Nothing. Nearly nothing. We almost never talk of it,” she sighed.

The sightless eyes narrowed. “Who is ‘we’?”

“Anyone. No one, _really_. And almost never. But you must find it so embarrassing.”

The Beast walked on and she struggled to suppress her grin. Oh, he had no use for social concerns, but he did have his little vanities, didn’t he?

The Queen of the Clouds drifted closer to the Beast. “And do you not admire the boy’s pluck, Voice of the Night? His stubbornness? His so-convenient blindness?”

“You have taken a fancy to him, if you know his personality so well. But I have not seen enough of his abilities to judge him one way or the other,” the Beast said frostily.

“Then here’s your chance. Why not take the little one, make a tree of him, and put the poet to the test? He’s old enough to fend for himself in the Woods, if you’re prepared to guarantee his life to him. And if not...”

The Beast turned to face her and tilted his head. He squinted his flat, bright eyes and looked her up and down. She smiled, sweet and celestial.

“Throwing two souls into the abyss, all to keep your place as a maker of wishes. I wonder what dreamers would think if they knew?”

“Dreamers don’t really understand political practicalities,” the Queen of the Clouds replied serenely.

“You will owe me a favor,” he intoned.

“Oh, I owe you nothing!” she snapped. “Nothing! I am giving you two children for the price of one!”

“But I have one. And I can take or leave the other. My Woodsman has some years left in him.”

Lightning arched from the tips of her fingers and all around the flying strands of her hair. Above her, the thunder rumbled and rolled, battering the night air down flat in the woods. The birds flying around her head whipped into a frenzy. In human houses, barometers dropped like stones.

She let out a shrill noise of sheer frustration.

The Beast of Eternal Darkness looked at her, deliberately blinked his eyes, and turned to walk away.

“One favor,” she gritted. “A tiny one. One day, when you call me for it, I will help you save face.”

The Beast paused and stood, considering it. “...yes. That's good. If I save your pride now, someday you will save mine.”

The thunder rolled off. The sparks of lightning raged and fizzled and sank back down towards her skin, leaving her more peacefully aglow.

“I will,” she said tiredly. “Now trade with me, Old Man. What have you got to lose?”

“Less than you, I think,” he muttered. “You really must stop promising rewards to mortals. You’ll never get return on that investment.”

She sneered and leaned down much closer to him.  “But it gives me such an excuse to talk to my charming neighbors.”

The Beast took a step back and jerked his head a little, disgust written all over him. She didn’t care.

“And I am so, so grateful,” she crooned, pushing him another step back.

“Well, for your gratitude,” the Beast drawled, “what would I not do?”

“Take the little one.”

“Lead me to the child,” the Beast said. “I want another look at him.”

But he was finally sold on the project, and they both knew it. At the base of the tree, he made a perfunctory examination of the child and nodded his head. He waved her away out of sight before he began flicking the child awake.

The little boy stirred, sleepy and wracked with cold. “Huh? What?”

The Beast hummed above him. “Let’s make a deal, Gregory.”

Her little champion broke into a bright grin, a thing completely inappropriate for the situation. Hidden from view, the Queen of the Clouds smiled and left them alone. Her bargain was fulfilled; she could return to her own hunt.

The Old Man had been unpleasant, certainly, but if she were completely honest it had all been much more civil than she’d been expecting. And that favor would never be called: what could a creature so hateful and solitary ever have to save face over? Perhaps this was all a good thing. Perhaps it’d even be easier to trade with the Old Man in the future.

She could always hope.


End file.
